Galina Shirokova

The Business Model and Firm Performance: The Case of Russian Food Service Ventures

Using a unique methodology for capturing the business model and drawing comparisons across larger samples of firms, we investigate the relationship between business model design and firm performance in a Russian context. The evolution of the business model concept and its components is reviewed. Empirical research was conducted on the basis of a cross‐sectional survey of firms in the food service industry. A typology of seven business models in this industry is produced, and linkages are established between model type and company performance.

Performance of Russian SMEs: exploration, exploitation and strategic entrepreneurship

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the ability of Russian firms to develop strategic entrepreneurship (SE) as a source of sustainable competitive advantage in a turbulent and hostile business environment. It aims to suggest a model of SE that includes two components – exploration and exploitation – and to test this model on 500 Russian small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) which show the influence of these components on firm performance. It also aims to address one of the most fundamental questions confronting the international business (IB) field: “What determines the success and failure of firms around the world?”.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents empirical research with a regression analysis of 500 Russian SMEs operating in Moscow and St Petersburg in three major industries: information technologies and communications (ICT), hotels, restaurants, and cafes (HoReCa) and wholesale/retail.Findings – The Russian firms show a positive influence of exploration and exploitation...

Entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance in different environmental settings

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance across different levels of environmental hostility and market growth. The contingency approach of two-way interactions of EO with each environmental variable is contrasted with the configurational approach of three-way interactions of EO simultaneously with different levels of both environmental variables. Design/methodology/approach – Hierarchical regression analysis is applied for the pooled data set of 163 Finnish and Russian small- and medium-sized enterprises, and supplemented with post hoc analysis of the differences in regression slopes across environmental configurations. Findings – Results show that EO is directly and positively associated with firm performance. However, the strength and direction of this relationship varies by configurations of the external environment variables. Firms achieve superior performance when adopting EO in environments with high levels of bo...

Organisational life-cycle: The characteristics of develop- mental stages in Russian companies created from scratch*

Although plenty of organizational life-cycle research in developed countries may be found in the literature, there is a remarkable lack of such research for transition economies like Russia. This article presents the results of 593 Russian entrepreneurial firms surveyed with a focus on organizational life-cycle issues. A model of the life-cycle was developed including three stages: start-up, growth and formalization. It is found that the development of Russian newly established companies is characterized by an unusually slow change of centralization and formalization level as the firm moves from one stage to another and by preserving the owners control over the firm even after the transition to professional management.

Factors of new venture performance in Russia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discover factors of new ventures performance in Russia and to combine them in a model which describes the influence of these factors on the performance of a new venture.Design/methodology/approach – A cross‐sectional study of new ventures was conducted by a field survey in six regions in Russia. One‐factor variance analysis and regression analysis were used to identify significant factors.Findings – Three groups of factors were identified as significantly influencing performance of new ventures in Russia: environmental factors, style of management and type of strategic behaviour. For environmental factors the following variables were included: crisis in industry, increase in product demand, predictability of regulatory authorities behaviour, predictability of financial markets, and environmental hostility. For company management style, several variables were statistically significant: level of centralization, concentration of management in the hands of the founder...

Impact of the Domestic Institutional Environment on the Degree of Internationalization of SMEs in Transition Economies

The internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is a topic of considerable academic and practical interest, but there has been little research in the context of transition economies. This paper contributes to this field by examining the influence of aspects of the domestic institutional business environment on the degree of internationalization of SMEs in transition economies. Based on a dataset from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey 2009, the authors examine whether specific factors in the regulatory and administrative system affect the degree of SME internationalization, and propose a series of hypotheses. The findings highlight the significant role of tax rates, tax administration and corruption in the internationalization process, and demonstrate the importance of institutional factors for SMEs from transition economies.

Organizational change and firm growth in emerging economies

This paper examines how various types of organizational change influence a firm’s growth in the short/medium term and long term within emerging economies. We classify organizational change on two dimensions: the scale of change and the duration of change. The proposed hypotheses were tested on a sample of 1446 companies from 28 emerging economies. The results of our analysis suggest that rapid realignment and rapid transformation is more likely to have stronger impact on the firm growth in the short/medium-term, but a weaker impact in the long-term for emerging market firms. Significant evidence on the impact of slow realignment and slow transformation on a firm growth could not be obtained.

New Venture Internationalization from an Emergent Market: Unexpected Findings from Russia

This article offers new insights on determinants of degree and scope of new venture internationalization from emerging markets. We set our study by development of a theoretical framework and hypothesis integrating entrepreneur-, firm-, industry-, and institutional factors to be tested in the Russian empirical context. The results indicate that institutional factors have the strongest relationship with the degree and scope of internationalization in Russian NVs. However, contrary to our expectations and existing literature, entrepreneur-, firm-, and industry-related factors are not associated with new venture internationalization. These unexpected findings have motivated us to implement the second round of empirical research using qualitative approach. As an outcome, we were able to explain the underlying forces behind the inconsistencies in the survey results and to develop four puzzles that provide a foundation for the theoretical extension of new venture internationalization from emerging markets.

Crossing the threshold from founder management to professional management in Russian firms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to bring together a strategic choice perspective and an institutional perspective in order to address the key research questions: how do Russian founder-CEOs perceive the institutional environment when succession issues are taken into consideration?; how do the perceived characteristics of different formal and informal institutions affect the founder-CEO’s decision to delegate authority to a professional CEO?; and what are the main barriers to founder-CEO succession in threshold firms in emerging markets such as Russia? Design/methodology/approach – Using a data set of 500 entrepreneurial companies from fast growing industries in Russia, the paper defines and studies threshold firms and analyses how various perceived characteristics of the institutional environment in emerging markets influence the likelihood of transition from founder management to professional management. Findings – Institutional factors such as poor security of property rights and dependence of th...

Founder influences on the development of organizations: A comparison between founder and non‐founder managed Russian firms

The paper deals with the problem of founders’ impact on the process of organizational development and performance. The goal of the research is to provide a comparative analysis of activity in founder‐run and non‐founder‐run Russian firms. In order to run this analysis 224 companies created from scratch by Russian entrepreneurs in the period of years from 1992 to 1998 were studied. Statistical analyses were performed on two independent samples of companies, namely 162 companies managed by the founders and 62 companies that were run by hired professional managers. As a result of the analysis, statistical differences were found in relation to the criteria of number of employees and hierarchical levels; firms managed by founders usually have less staff and fewer hierarchical levels than the non‐founder companies. Nevertheless the dynamics in sales of the two samples of founder and non‐founder companies during the last 3 years were quite similar.